I expect a new Department of Homeland Infectious Disease Security soon, with a corresponding Patriot Act-like law to go with it. Then a TSA type department to screen for infected people will soon appear. This will be permanent and our lives will be disrupted forever. It’s not a big stretch to believe this. It happened already only eighteen years ago and in much less dire circumstances.
Let us not forget that the Patriot Act allows our government to detain anyone suspected of terrorism without due process. Suspects can be hauled off to jail and held there indefinitely with no recourse. It sounded good at the time, but what really happened was the broad expansion of the meaning of terrorist. New interpretations allowed for law enforcement and legislators to come up with the concept of “terroristic threatening.” This quickly evolved to include anyone threatening another, either directly or indirectly, even on social media, to fall under the auspices of the Patriot Act. Statements like “you call my mom a ho one more time, and ima kick your ass” are now considered terroristic. It also didn’t take long for the government to suggest that veterans were part of a group worthy of suspicion and ironically, it didn’t take long that anyone claiming to be a patriot was suspected to be a radicalized nutjob.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS.
Fast forward to the near future when this new “Saving Lives Act,” which like it’s older cousin the Patriot Act, will allow the suspension of due process for huge swaths of the public to be “suspected infectors.” We’ll be told it’s our patriotic duty to allow these infectors to be detained because, you know, it’s for the greater good.
As for the new ‘Infection Security Administration’ I believe we can expect it to be just as incompetent as the current TSA, but far more intrusive. It’s reach will be far more intrusive than just being held up and groped at airports. We may well see them setting up DUI-like checkpoints at random intersections. Imagine ISA officers, wearing hazmat suits, staring in our cars with a flashlight, then scanning us for fevers, jamming a swab in our noses, or requiring fingerprint scans to determine if we have a virus. Whatever you do, do not sneeze or cough in their presence because if you’re not taken into custody, then your car will be permanently marked with a Scarlet S to indicate you’re a “spreader.”
THE NEW DECLARED HEROES
And for those “essential workers,” the ISA will be responsible for getting them a nationally approved and certified license to be allowed to travel without harassment. These people will be the new envied privileged class. You know, the ones the rest of the public will be expected to treat as heroes.
All this may sound far fetched, but remember the TSA and Patriot Act appeared in 2001 and the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002. Most of the public applauded these new actions by our federal government. Why? Because the public was scared. We could not look into the future and know what was to come and we let our fear override our concerns for liberty and natural rights we’ve all become accustomed to. What we are seeing now is eerily similar to those times and it scares the hell out of me. Governments always use widespread fear to establish more and more control over the lives of the governed. The warnings from our forefathers about giving up freedoms for security has never rung more true than at times like this.
We should all realize that mandatory shelter-in-place declarations, business closures, travel restrictions, etc., from federal, state, and local authorities are nothing but a thinly disguised name for martial law. These declarations are a suspension of nearly every one of our so-called protected rights. While these are not currently being enforced by the military, there have certainly been some signals to suggest they might be. Besides, the threat of our militarized police forces enforcing these “rules” make this distinction moot.
Unlike the Patriot Act where suspected “terrorists” were few and as long as they weren’t snatching us, our families, and our neighbors out of our homes at night and sending us off to a prison in Cuba where the public went about their lives as nothing happened. These new developments will be affecting every single American, with the exception of the newly anointed, occupational based privileged class. And may God help you if you get branded with the Scarlet S.
None of the above addresses the economic issues we’re facing now due to the government shutdown of the economy. I’ll briefly say this: Printing money never works. Ever. All the money budgeted for this stimulus effort is being printed out of thin air, or the digital equivalent. We’ll never be able to pay down the debt we’ve already accumulated, much less the additional trillions we’re tossing in the economy now with wild abandon. As you cheer on Uncle Sammy for the Trump Checks soon to arrive, just know they’re just sending you money they either printed or already took from you in taxes.
Time will tell if my predictions come to pass, but I’ll be very surprised if they, or something quite similar, if they don’t.